


Bad Things Happen Bingo - Prompt 3

by MeYaGurl



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Ellie whump, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Hurt Ellie (The Last of Us), Hurt Joel (The Last of Us), Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Joel Whump, Parent Joel (The Last of Us), Protective Joel (The Last of Us), Set between games, Whump, a lot a joel whump lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29743446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeYaGurl/pseuds/MeYaGurl
Summary: Hurts to Breathe - The Last of Us
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us), Ellie & Maria (The Last of Us), Joel & Tommy (The Last of Us)
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853737
Kudos: 7





	Bad Things Happen Bingo - Prompt 3

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a load of shit but here we are.

All Ellie could do was brush his hair and listen to his breaths. He had one of the only oxygen masks that Jackson has and one of the few precious tanks of oxygen that they managed to scavenge from a hospital attached to the end of it.

Joel lost the feeling in his legs from riding on the horse for three hours straight but he did really care. All he cared about was Ellie. 

She is sat on her own horse ahead of him sketching the view of the woods and river. 

“Ahh, Joel look!” She said in a hushed voice. Joel looked where she was pointing and saw the first baby deer of the season. 

“Get a sketch of it, quick,” Joel whispered over her shoulder as she quickly made a sketch of the animal feeding. 

The pair continued on into the woods, keeping an eye out for infected along the way.

Tommy and Maria had given Joel the day off to get some quality time with Ellie. Together the pair decided to go into the woods on the south side of Jackson to go sightseeing and get some fresh summer air. 

After a few more minutes of riding silently, Joel notices the woods getting thicker with no path around them. 

“Hey, c’mon we should get off the horses. Woods’ getting too thick for ‘em to ride through.” Ellie nods and hops down, taking her horse’s reins in the palm of one hand with her journal and pencil in the other. 

Together the pair walk in the woods in silence, just taking in the ambience and sounds around them. Joel watches Ellie from just behind her, constantly questioning if what he did was right. If Ellie would understand why he did what he did. If she would forgive him. He didn’t even question for one second that she would hate him for the rest of his days on this damned planet. But he did have a small sliver of hope that she would one day she would be able to forgive him even just a little bit.

“Oooooh, I would get a great view from up there!” Ellie points at a high ridge that hangs over the forest and river. Joel hangs the reins of his horse on a high branch and bends over to give Ellie a boost up to the ridge. 

Joel watches as she pulls her self up and stands to look over the ridge. 

“You gotta see this.” 

“Is there a ladder up there?” Ellie takes a moment to look for anything to help get Joel up.

“No.” Joel shrugs his shoulders “But you could jump and I could help pull you over.” Joel let out a hearty laugh. 

“Look kid, I know you have been building your strength nut you ain’t that strong.” Ellie pulls a fake offended face.

“Ahh, I wouldn’t need to be that strong if someone wasn’t that big.” Joel lets out another laugh. 

“Alright, let's give it a shot.” Joel starts walking backwards to get a running jump, Ellie leans over the side with her arm down to pull him up when he jumps. 

As Joel backs up, he feels something tense under his foot. He freezes for a brief moment as he hears the too well-known sound of wood cracking as the trap swings around toward him. He hesitates for just a moment too long and couldn’t get out the way of the trap even if he tried.

Joel screamed in pain as the sharpened wooden spikes ripped through Joel’s abdomen and down past his hip, through to the midpoint of his thigh and caught on the toe of his boot. 

“Joel!” Ellie could only watch as Joel collapses gripping his side in pain, his hands turning red with blood that isn’t stopping any time soon. Ellie hesitantly walks the edge of the ridge trying to figure out the best way for her to drop down, the last thing Joel needs is Ellie injuring herself as well. 

Ellie decides to drop her body off the ledge, holding herself up with her fingers before dropping to the ground. Ellie lands on her side, winding herself momentarily before a pained groan from Joel reminders her of what she was doing. 

Joel was now surrounded by a pool of his own blood. Ellie didn’t like how familiar this felt, she didn’t like the memories from the mall resurfacing. She defiantly didn’t like the thought of him in another coma, leaving her alone again. 

Joel could see the fear in Ellie’s eyes grow. His own fear was growing with every pained breath. It felt as if his insides where being yanked out of his body. 

“Ellie, I need you to-” Another pained exhale and inhale. “I need you to fetch the- the map and walkie from my bag.” Ellie nods and disappears for a moment. She returns with each item in each hand.

“Wha-what do I do?” Joel can feel himself getting weaker, he needs to get the correct information to Tommy or Maria before it’s too late. 

Jackson has set up an emergency communication guideline. Should anyone get hurt on patrol, they are meant to radio into Jackson and use a reference point on the map to allow a team to locate where they are within a certain mile radius. 

“Radio Tommy and find the reference point on the map-” Joel tenses as more blood seeps from his wounds. “The ridge is drawn on there for reference.” 

Ellie sets the map down on the ground and flips through the pages until she finds the ridge. Grabbing the radio she takes a deep breath to speak clearly. 

“Tommy? Over.” No one answers. “Tommy, are you there? Over.” No answer. “Goddammit! Tommy!-”

“Ellie?” Ellie releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Maria! We need help! Joel’s injured.” 

“Ellie, I need you to tell me what reference point you two are in. Over.” Ellie heard a second voice in the background ‘Goddammit! I’ll get the rescue team!’, Tommy’s voice. Maria’s calm voice help ground Ellie, Joel could see it on her face. 

“South-West, section six point five. Next to ‘Forest River Ridge’. Over.” There was a beat of silence and Ellie wondered if the walkie talkie had died. 

“Alright Ellie, we are on our way. What happened to Joel? Over.” Joel withered on the floor next to Ellie, fighting the darkness that weighed his body to the ground. 

“He boosted me up the ridge and he started walking backwards to get a running jump so I could pull him up. I think he stood on a trap of some kind. Sharp wooden spears have ripped through him from his ribs to his thigh on his right side. Over.” Ellie finally let out a shaky breath. She lifts his shirt and immediately regrets it. His flesh is completely torn on his right side, Ellie can’t even make out where he was impaled by the rebar just two years earlier. 

Ellie reaches in her own bag and takes out her jacket. Pressing it against Joel’s side, she apologises as he bites back a scream of pain as best he can. 

For what felt like an eternity, Ellie hears a horse arrive in the distance. 

“Over here!” She keeps her hands pressed to his side as best she can, the jacket is completely soaked through and keeps slipping off of his body from the amount of blood he has lost. 

“Joel? You still with me?” Joel can only groan in response. All the energy in his body has dissolved into the blood-soaked grass around him. 

“Holy shit.” Tommy drops down next to Ellie from his horse. He takes over from pressing her jacket against his side. Ellie lets herself crumble after just holding herself together for Joel’s sake. 

The world around her turns to noise as she watches Tommy’s teamwork on Joel.

“Joel? Joel, can you hear us?” Another grunt in response. Joel’s entire body simitainiously felt as if it were on fire and freezing. He can feel Tommy’s hand on his shoulder. 

Joel grunts in pain as the medics start working on stopping the bleeding. 

“Joel, we need to get you on a stretcher to get you back to Jackson.” 

Ellie didn’t even realise that Maria had slowly pulled her away to let her husband and his team do their jobs. Maria can feel Ellie’s hands shake against her own, covered in slick blood of her brother-in-law. Maria grimaced as the medics lifted Joel’s shirt to reveal his torn flesh. Tommy and Maria make eye connect for a brief second but that’s all either of them needed to communicate with each other.

“Ellie, I’m going to take you back to Jackson-” Ellie violently shakes her head.  
“No. I don’t want to leave him.” Maria starts backing up with Ellie wrapped in her arms.  
“I know you don’t but it’s what’s best right now, okay?” Ellie starts fighting back to be at Joel’s side but Maria is stronger than she looks. Maria picks Ellie up as the young girl screams in her arms for her to stop. 

Despite Ellie’s best attempts, Maria gets her on horseback and rides off back to Jackson. 

Upon hearing Ellie’s voice in pain, Joel needs to get up. He needs to help her. He needs to comfort her. He needs to be with her.

“No. No. Stay on the ground, alrigh’. We have nearly stopped all the bleeding. You just need to keep still now. Maria has taken Ellie back to Jackson, you’ll see her later.” Joel relaxes at his brother’s words. At least she was safe. 

Joel doesn’t remember the trip back to Jackson that well. He remembers the sounds of the horses. He remembers the light changing about him. He remembers his brother’s voice. He certainly remembers the pain. 

By the time they got back to Jackson, Joel could only take short, shallow breaths. His lungs felt trapped as if he was being crushed by rubble.

Joel is rushed to the medical centre in Jackson where he undergoes almost five hours of surgery to close his wounds. 

Meanwhile, Ellie is sat with Maria in the office at the top of the south side watchtower, eagerly waiting for news on Joel. For the most part, the pair had been sat in silence. 

Ellie’s leg jumped up and down involuntarily. Her mind races with what could have happened to them on the way back. What if they got overran with a horde of infected? What if Joel died their and no one wants to be the one to tell her? What if hunter’s got them? Someone had to have set that trap right?-

“Ellie, are you bleeding?” Maria starts lifting her her sleeve on her left arm where there was in fact a medium sized trickle of blood running down her arm to her wrist. She was so caught up with what was happening to Joel that she hadn’t even noticed the injury. 

“It must’ve happened when I jumped down from the ledge.” She rolled her sleeve up further to reveal a broken twig impaled in her arm. Ellie goes to rip it out of herself when Maria stops her. 

“Ellie no. We need to clean it and make sure we aren’t about to rip anymore skin.” Maria stands and reaches into a floor cabinet, pulling out a small first aid kit. 

Maria gently pulls the twig from Ellie’s arms, thankfully there were no extra parts stuck under her skins to cause extra problems. Maria sew up the wound and applied a piece of gauze to it to keep it as clean as possible. 

As Maria was packing the first aid kit away there was a knock at the door. Maria opened the door and saw Sam, a nurse from the medical centre. She looked as though she had run from the medical to the watch tower.  
“He’s out of surgery but not completely in the clear yet.” 

“Can I see him?” Sam nods and gestures for the pair of them to follow her. 

When they reach the medical centre, Sam shows Ellie to Joel’s room immediately, Maria deals with signing in at the desk. 

When Ellie sees him, her breath catches in her throat. Joel is laying flat on his back, the bandages on his chest fully exposed for all to see. Ellie walks over to the chair next to the bed and cringes at the scrapping sound it makes across the floor. She drags it as close as she can to the bed but it still isn’t close enough. She sits on her knees and leans over Joel’s face.

All she could do was brush his hair and listen to his breaths. He had one of the only oxygen masks that Jackson has and one of the few precious tanks of oxygen that they managed to scavenge from a hospital attached to the end of it.

Ellie sat and waited from him to wake up.


End file.
